Dynamic Analysis of SQL Statements in Data-intensive Programs

SQL statements control the bi-directional data flow between application programs and a database through a high-level, declarative and semantically rich data manipulation language. Analyzing these statements brings invaluable information that can be used in such applications as program understanding, database reverse engineering, intrusion detection, program behaviour analysis, program refactoring, traffic monitoring, performance analysis and tuning, to mention some of them. SQL APIs come in two variants, namely static and dynamic. While static SQL statements are fairly easy to process, dynamic SQL statements most often require dynamic analysis techniques that may prove more difficult to implement. The goal of the paper is to identify and evaluate the most effective techniques for dynamic SQL statement analysis in data-intensive application programs. First, it describes the SQL API variants from the program architecture point of view. Then, it discusses some of the most important software engineering applications to which SQL statement understanding can be a significant contribution. A large range of analysis and processing techniques are proposed and the properties of each of them are evaluated. Finally, the applicability of these techniques to the software engineering applications is established. Two practical applications are presented and discussed.